It's the airflow that was lacking. You literally just made a fly agaric gratin - all you forgot was the cheese! I would suggest to string up the mushroom pieces on a length of stout thread and let them air-dry for a while before transferring to a cool oven. Cooking mushrooms always generates a lot of juice as you will have noticed in your casserole dish. A pre-dry helps to minimise this.

Stainless steel mesh comes in very useful when drying mushrooms in general.

Air flow, air flow, air flow!

Thanks for the tip downwardsfromzero!!!!

From our errands outing this morning, a tiny amanita which had broken through some mulch in a different spot.

Fall is nearing it's conclusion. It has been a great season for amanita muscaria.

Yeah airflow and airspace is your friend when drying these. You don't know the definition of foul until you come home to the stench of liquesced amanita. Learned so how not to do it with these things, from maggots crawling all over my kitchen to the smell of black death in my dresser drawer...

Have you tried smoking the dried caps Tony? I find that to be a good way to help my body relax, and if I am doing a cannabis fast, it helps get me through the potentially sleepless nights associated with cold-turkeying weed. I am curious to see if they can help with titrating opiatates and -oids like methadone.

Null, funny you should mention. No I haven't smoked these but have heard anecdotes. I was thinking of enhancing some dried caps with acacia extract.